The Pleasure Zone

by Stella Resnick, PhD

Good feelings of all kinds promote personal growth, happy relationships, and living life to the fullest. Pleasure is good for us. Yet most of us have learned to hold ourselves back from feeling as good as we can.

This book identifies the Eight Core Pleasures - eight essential ways we need to enjoy life to feel fulfilled. These are:

Primal Pleasure

Letting Go and "Just Being"

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Pain Relief

Releasing and Resolving Old Hurst

Elemental Pleasures

Play, Humor, Movement and Sound

Mental Pleasures

Curiosity, Learning, Positive Thinking

Emotional Pleasures

Gratitude, Love, Courage, Enthusiasm

Sensual Pleasures

Taking Delight in the Senses

Sexual Pleasures

Arousal, Desire, Romance, Abandon

Spiritual Pleasures

Feeling A Part of Something Good

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THE PLEASURE ZONE shows how you may be resisting one or all of these pleasures, how pleasure-resistance can affect health and happiness, and how to use breath and body awareness exercises to give up old habits and chronic tensions and more fully embrace all of life’s joys.

Think of the Pleasure Zone not as a place but a process. It’s an active way of focusing your attention that centers you in the present moment, releases enormous stores of vitality and optimism, and makes whatever you’re doing considerably more enjoyable.

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The common thread linking optimism, feeling good about ourselves, experiencing emotional fulfillment in love and intimacy, enjoying deeply gratifying sex, good physical health, and positive aging, rests in the ability to fully enjoy eight core pleasures: the primal pleasure of timelessness, pain relief, play and humor, as well as mental, emotional, sensual, sexual, and spiritual pleasure.